Aziz Ansari on His Comedy Special Buried Alive, Romantic Relationships, and Getting Intimate with an Audience

In February, Aziz Ansari turned 30, a milestone reflected in his latest and most cohesive comedy special yet, Buried Alive. In the show, which the Parks and Recreation star toured last year and taped for Netflix in April, Ansari dissects the ridiculousness of modern romance, marriage, and parenthood, with anecdotes about his friends (on the subject of seeing video clips of their babies’ first steps: “Look, I walk all the time; I’m not impressed”) and occasional participation from the audience. After asking audience members to clap if they got married after knowing their significant other for less than two years, Aziz says, “We’re all laughing because you’re probably getting divorced. . . Did you lose a bet or something? I’ve had sweaters for two years and been like, ‘What the fuck was I doing with this sweater? It’s so stupid looking. I can’t believe I thought about living with this sweaterfor the rest of my life.’”

Other subjects addressed: Grindr, online dating, courting a love interest via text message, and the horror of people marrying their high-school sweethearts. (On the latter, Ansari imagines their internal dialogue: “I don't think I’m going to run into anyone interesting in my 20s or 30s. I’m just going to lock this shit down now.”)

In celebration of his Netflix special, available now, Ansari phoned VF.com last week and told us his thoughts about marriage proposals, the fourth comedy special he has already written, and his very official-sounding food club.

Julie Miller: You’ve spoken to everyone from Charlie Rose to Grover this week—talk about a whirlwind press tour!

Aziz Ansari: When you go from Charlie Rose to Grover, you’re really hit everything. Opposite ends of the spectrum but super fun. The Charlie Rose thing was weird because the other guests that week were Dick Cheney and Alan Greenspan. They were the bread to the Aziz sandwich.

Have any of your friends who inspired some of this material been offended by your cynical take on their life’s milestones?

Well, not all of my friends are married or have kids, but the ones who have gone down that path kind of realize that they inspired that whole train of writing. When I’ve done Buried Alive, people come up to me after who are married and have kids and they still totally relate to what I’m talking about.

At one point in the special, you ask married audience members to share how they proposed to their significant others. When you were on tour, were you surprised by just how lame and underwhelming some of these proposal stories were?

When I started tour, I thought that 50 percent of proposals would be pretty romantic stunts, but it actually ends up being 10 or 15 percent. Most people do something very simple. Every now and then, there would be a stunt one. One of my favorite ones was a guy who said he got a bunch of puppies to line up in the kitchen and they all had different shirts that spelled out, “Will you marry me, Katie?”

And I said, “Whoa! How did you get all of those puppies to line up?” And he was like, “Oh, I couldn’t. It was horrible.”

Then there was another one that involved a puppy. It was Christmas morning and the guy put a necklace with a ring around it on the puppy. And I was like, “Oh my god. So Christmas morning, she comes downstairs and a puppy with a ring on it runs up to her and—” and he said, “Oh, it wasn’t a real puppy. It was a stuffed puppy.” I was like, “Noooo! I want to go back to the reality where you bought her a real puppy. I don’t want to live in the world where you proposed with a stuffed animal.”

You’ve spoken in the past about being friends with Kanye West. How would you rate his proposal to Kim?

Oh, I saw that video! That seemed pretty grand. That was definitely more on the stunt realm to have all of that jazz ready. I’d say that was pretty good.

You’re very candid in this show about your fears and anxieties about romantic relationships. Were you ever hesitant about being that up front in a comedy routine?

Not at all. What I’ve discovered with stand-up is that the most personal is the most universal. I found that when I’m writing and I think, “Aww, I can’t say this . . . no one is going to relate it”—when I say those things, that’s when people really respond. To me, the best comedy is when a comedian reveals something super personal and weird and dark, and everyone can relate to it, but no one has ever said it themselves.

How do you keep track of all of your ideas for material? Do you keep it in your phone, in a notebook, or in a massive old-school filing cabinet like Joan Rivers?

Well, I’ve retired Buried Alive. But right now, I’ve written my fourth hour, which I will tour next year. As far as how I remember it all, I make, like, a set list of the title of each joke. And I have a notebook, but it’s more bullet points. I don’t have them all written out longhand anywhere. I do record all of the shows, though, so I can go back and listen to it if I want to. But when I’m working on a new hour, I can remember it pretty well. But that Joan Rivers documentary!

Wasn’t that great?

One of my favorite things that I have ever seen in a stand-up performance is that scene where she is doing some material about women and deafness, I think. And some guy in the audience interrupts her and says, “I have a deaf daughter and that is not right!” And she doesn’t even wait a millisecond. She just goes, “Fuck you! I have a deaf mother. You don’t tell me what I can talk about.” [Laughs.] It was the most awesome thing ever.

You mentioned that you’ve already written your next stand-up special. What themes do you explore in that?

It’s sort of about modern romance and what it means to be single in this era of technology and how does that change the way we treat each other and what it’s like to try to find someone to settle down with in this era. I know that sounds very serious, but I promise you that it’s a very funny show. I was on Conan yesterday and I kind of did a little sample of what it is.

I just think that it is a really frustrating time to be a single person, so I started exploring that. And I’m writing a book that’s kind of a companion to the fourth hour. It will be a book that has some original research. It’s like if theFreakonomics guys decided to do a book on relationships. But it will also have my sense of humor.

What kind of original research are you doing?

I’ve been meeting with all of these sociologists. It’s not going to be an advice book telling people how long they should wait until they text someone. It’s going to be more like, “When you text someone and they don’t text back, why does that make us so nuts?” And then going to a neuroscientist and being like, “Hey, explain to me why this makes us go crazy. And what can we do about it?” Maybe there is an experiment to devise certain measures we can go to. It’s me talking to really, really smart people about everyday dating issues.

You are openly skeptical about dating in modern society. Has the fact that you are now a celebrity or public figure made dating harder for you and, do you think, increased that skepticism?

Not for the reasons you’d think. Probably more so because I travel all the time or don’t live in one place all the time. Those things make it difficult. The other stuff, though— people might think, “What if someone is trying to take advantage of you and just go out with you if you’re famous?” One, that would be very obvious to spot. And two, no one has ever gone out with me and been like, “That’s been fun. Can you buy me a car?” [Laughs.] That just doesn’t happen. That’s not a real problem. As far as fame goes, I think it just opens the door, I guess. Maybe someone sees me and recognizes me from my work and is more open to getting to know me. I’d rather someone want to date me because they respect my work than they think my face looks good. At least I earned the cred through my work, right?

Is it true that you’re involved in a food club?

Yeah, that’s me and two of my friends. We haven’t done it in a while, but it’s kind of stupid. We just get really dressed up and go to a nice restaurant. If we enjoy the meal, which we generally do because we pick a place we think we’re going to like, we give them a plaque that has our faces etched on it in gold. It says “The Food Club has dined here and deemed it plaque-worthy.” It’s a really serious-looking plaque and all of the restaurants we’ve given it to have put it front and center. It’s funny because people will walk into a restaurant and be like, “What the fuck is the Food Club? Who are these guys etched in gold?”

Lastly, how is your cousin Harris? We haven’t heard about him in your material lately.

Harris is good. He is in college now. He is at N.Y.U. I think people sometimes get worried, like, “How’s Harris? Is he O.K.?” because I haven’t mentioned him. But the jokes I’ve done about Harris were years and years ago, when he was 12 or 13 years old. Now he’s, like, in college. He’s not like a sad-sack college kid, either. He’s, like, thin and in shape and he dresses well. [Laughs.] He’s a very fashionable young man, and I can only imagine that he is getting so much pussy.